Kathy Love - Demon Cant Help It

A slow smile unfurled over his equally perfect lips as he saw her shock.

"Hi."

Jo blinked. Was that all he could say? What the hell was he doing here? Her first impulse was to shove him out of the shabby classroom that just managed to further showcase his utter perfection.

Instead she pushed at the edge of her glasses and scowled at him.

"What are you doing here?"

Maksim's smiled deepened as if she'd greeted him with warmth rather than shocked disdain.

"I was in the neighborhood."

Jo's scowl creased into a frown. Was he serious?

"Well," she said slowly since it was clear he'd lost his mind, and might have trouble comprehending. "I'm at work, so I really don't have time to chat at the moment." She jerked her head toward the children. For the first time since they'd arrived this morning, all their little attentions were focused on Jo and her unexpected visitor.

Leave it to children to pay attention when you don't want them to, Jo thought, praying they'd lose interest quickly. Of course, they wouldn't.

"Actually," Maksim said clearly undaunted by the miniature audience, "I really didn't just stop by for a visit." He smiled again, and held out his hand. For the first time, Jo noticed he held several papers.

She stared at them for a moment, then reached out to take the pages. Carefully, she studied them, flipping through one page then another then another.

She knew her eyes must have been the size of one of the flowers on the wall when she finally looked up at him.

He didn't wait for her to speak, or maybe he realized she couldn't.

"As you can see, I have plenty of experience working with—" he smiled at the kids, who still watched him as if he was a superhero come to life, "these little—fellas."

He reached out to scruff the boy closest to him on the head. He smiled broadly at the child, but Jo noticed this time it seemed a little more strained.

She continued to gape at him. He wasn't really saying he wanted to volunteer? He didn't really have experience? He couldn't. He just—couldn't.

"Let me see this?" Cherise appeared at her side, snatching the résumé out of Jo's numb fingers.

After a few seconds, she let out a low whistle. "Gorgeous and experienced." Her chatty little eyebrow rose. "You must have dropped right out of heaven."

Maksim grinned and extended a hand. "Something like that."

Cherise readily seized his hand, grinning back at him with moony, dark eyes as if she was half in love with him already.

The image of her no-nonsense daycare director practically deifying this man was the thing that snapped Jo out of her daze.

"Excuse me," she bit out to Maksim, roughly extracting Cherise's hand from his. She dragged the much larger woman out of the room, discovering strength she wouldn't have thought she had.

"What are you doing, girl?" Cherise said as soon as they were in the hallway.

"We are not hiring this guy," Jo stated.

"I know that."

Intense relief flooded Jo's body to the point she almost sagged against the wall.

"But we are sure as hell going to get him to volunteer until we can afford to hire him." Cherise leaned back to sneak a peek in the doorway. "Mmm, mmm, mmm." Her chatty eyebrow rose, again speaking volumes about what she thought of the man.

Jo couldn't help peeping around the corner herself, just in time for Maksim to notice her. He waved and she jerked back out of sight, this time allowing herself to lean against the wall.

"No," she said to Cherise. "No, no, no."

"Why ever not?" Cherise asked, which was a fair question. And one that Jo couldn't answer honestly. She couldn't tell her daycare director that he couldn't work with her, because Jo was worried she was too attracted to him. How professional was that? Not professional in that least, that's how.

Cherise held up the list of places he'd worked and volunteered. Big Brother/Big Sister, a basketball coach for mentally handicapped children, a counselor at a camp for kids who were terminally ill.

"How are we going to find anyone better?"

Jo stared at the sheets. They weren't. He was a dream. He was.

"He isn't what he seems," Jo finally said.

"You know him?" Cherise's eyebrow said she was willing to listen if Jo had some facts about the guy.

"I've met him a few times before," she said, realizing that hardly sounded incriminating enough. Especially for the virtually perfect volunteer.

"So do you think these things are made up?" Cherise waved the paper slightly.

"Maybe," Jo said, grabbing onto that suggestion, although she again didn't sound as convincing as she thought she should.

"Well, they'd be easy enough establishments to contact."

Cherise was right. Of course. Her and her always accurate eyebrow.

Jo nodded, then took the résumé from her. She would tell him that she needed to contact a few of his past employers and then let him know. That was a reasonable way to get him to leave, and then, once she wasn't so completely discombobulated by his presence, she'd come up with a believable reason to reject his offer to volunteer.

Walking back into the room on legs that she hoped looked steadier than they felt, she crossed directly to him.

She forced a smile. "Maksim, this résumé is very impressive."

He nodded, and she noted his humble expression didn't quite meet his eyes. See, he was up to something.

"So—" She paused as she felt a tug on her arm. She glanced down to see Damon at her elbow.

"Wait just a moment, Damon," she told the boy.

She returned her attention to Maksim. "So, as I was saying—"

Again there was a tug on her sleeve, this time more insistent.

"Damon," she said, but stopped when she saw the boy's pallor and the expression on his face. Out of instinct, Jo stepped aside, just as the boy heaved. Vomit spewed from the boy's mouth in a flying spray, all of the chunky, foul-smelling stuff landing directly on Maksim's shirt and pants.

Jo stared, stunned, absently noting that at least Maksim's polished black Kenneth Cole shoes had remained unscathed.

Jo started to open her mouth to say…Well, she didn't know what, when nausea swelled in her own stomach. Then his expensive Kenneth Coles weren't so unscathed anymore.

She retched again.

"I told you I couldn't eat the yogurt," the nasty little creature who'd just covered him in vile, slimy stench said almost smugly before the large woman, who Maksim was really beginning to like, whisked him away.

Couldn't eat yogurt was an understatement. The dreadful little beast had puked in Exorcist-sized proportions—all over one of his favorite shirts, no less. But Maksim's attention was drawn away from his soiled clothing to the woman who'd added to the disgusting mess.

Jo still stood in front of him. Well, stood implied that she was on her feet; it was more like she leaned heavily on the table where the children squealed and gagged and pointed at the disaster clinging to his $200 hand-tailored shirt from Milan and his $300 Armani trousers.

But he disregarded both his destroyed clothes and the creatures surrounding them, who sounded like a flock of agitated farmyard birds. Instead he stared Jo, a strange sensation he didn't quite understand making him feel—like he needed to help her.

Shake it off, man, he told himself. No piece of ass was worth this.

But instead of leaving, he reached forward to balance her. She jerked away, nearly slipping off the edge of her precarious perch. Even though she was stubbornly and stupidly avoiding his touch, he wasn't willing to let her fall.

Instead he pulled her to his side, keeping her away from the side Damon had covered, with more than just yogurt, he might add.

"Where's the bathroom?" he asked.